Asian-Americans Face Competition From Chinese Students For College Spots

Asian-Americans are finding it harder to compete with foreign students, mainly from China, for a place in the college of their choice, with more US colleges opting to admit foreign students due to the higher tuition fees that they pay.

According to a report by Bloomberg, almost 200 freshmen from China enrolled in the University of California, San Diego, in 2011, up from 16 in 2009, making it a 12-fold increase. At the same time, the number of Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230, from 1,723 in 2009.

The report added that in 2009, University of California administrators had told the San Diego campus to reduce its number of California freshmen by 500 to about 3,400 and fill the spots with out-of-state and international students. California residents pay an average of $13,234 in annual tuition while non-residents and foreigners pay $22,878.

Asian-Americans in particular suffer the most, due to the challenge of trying to distinguish themselves from other Asians coming from overseas. One in five international students in the US came from China in 2010-11, a 43 percent increase over the previous year. US colleges are also more inclined to tap the Chinese market for students takes to the rise in middle-class incomes in China that coincides with steep budget cuts at US universities.

“We’re all competing for the same goal, and the fact that they’re international makes them that much more interesting to the UCs,” said Casey Chang, a Chinese-American senior at Claremont High School in Claremont, California.

Mitchell Chang, an education professor at UCLA, added that the existing admission policies at US colleges already handicap Asian-Americans who intend to further their education, due to their preferences for first-generation college students. For instance, a low-income Latino or African-American student is likely to be chosen for admission over a middle-income Asian-American whose parents went to college.

“When you add this new trend on top of the political shifts, you might have a double whammy that tends to disadvantage Asian-Americans,” said Mitchell Chang.

According to Patrick Callan, the president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, while some US universities do admit foreign students for legitimate educational reasons, these colleges may also be abdicating their responsibility to educate their own citizens.

“At what point is this not diversifying the student population and just becomes another form of revenue chasing?” said Callan. “We’re in some danger of simply taking whoever can pay the most.”

At the same time, foreign students also believe that they are under unfair scrutiny by other students who think they’re only there because they pay more.

“They think ‘The foreign students, they admit some who are not fit, maybe they’re not good at academics,’” said Zijin Xiao, 20, a UC freshman from Shenzhen, China. “It makes me upset.”

Others though understand the trade-off made by the universities.

“I need the education and they need my money,” said Xiaojing Pang, 22, a communications major from Guangdong province.

Dr Steinbock is an internationally recognized expert of the multipolar world. He focuses on international business, international relations, investment and risk among all major advanced economies and large emerging economies. In addition to advisory activities (www.differencegroup.net), he is affiliated with India China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and EU Center (Singapore). For more, please see http://www.differencegroup.net/. Research Director of International Business at India China and America Institute (USA) and Visiting Fellow at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore).

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